


Dark Desire

by lamardeuse



Category: Stargate Atlantis
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-05-04
Updated: 2010-05-04
Packaged: 2017-10-09 07:25:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,702
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/84507
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lamardeuse/pseuds/lamardeuse
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It's pretty dark.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Dark Desire

**Author's Note:**

> Written for SGA Flashfiction on livejournal (dark side challenge).

“Okay, this is not good.”

“What happened?”

“What happened? It got dark.”

The sound of John’s sigh seemed a lot louder in the pitch black of the windowless room. “Yeah, I kinda noticed that. What I mean is, _why _did it happen?”

“I would be able to figure that out for you if – _ow_!”

“Sorry –”

“That was my foot!”

“I said I was sorry.”

“I need that foot for running from things that try to kill me, which in this galaxy is a lot of things – ”

“Jesus, McKay, I mashed your instep. I didn’t cripple you for life. Would you please just look at your instruments and see if you can tell us – ”

“Okay, this is bad.”

“Is that worse than not good?”

“Nothing’s working.” John was nearly deafened by the sound of tearing Velcro. “The laptop’s dead, too.”

John tapped his comm link. “Sheppard to Gateroom.” Nothing, not even static. “Sheppard to Gateroom, please respond. Campbell. Elizabeth.”

“I think we’ve moved all the way up to ‘sucking,’ in case you were wondering what the next stage was,” Rodney snapped.

“Okay,” John said slowly. “Are you thinking what I’m thinking?”

John could practically hear Rodney folding his arms. “I probably already have.”

“EMP?”

“Yes. I’ve thought of it. It’s the least attractive option right now.”

“What are the other options?”

Another pause. “I haven’t thought of any other options.”

“Then how can – oh, never mind,” John huffed, starting off in the direction they’d come. He might have known that when Rodney showed up this morning with a turkey sandwich, cole slaw, Coke (real honest-to-god Coke!) and the promise of a cool new Atlantean building to explore that things were going to go straight to hell. It wasn’t like he’d ever had much luck with picnics in this galaxy.

“Wait! What are you – ”

“I’m looking for the exit,” John said. “Just stay put for a minute.”

“Don’t leave!”

“For God’s sake, Rodney, I’m not – ” which is when he ran into the door and knocked himself flat on his ass.

  


    
    
    
    
 

*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*

    
    
    
    
 

  
“I really wish you hadn’t done that,” Rodney said, his fingers softly exploring John’s skull as he spoke.

“Yeah, well, if it’s any consolation – ow – I wish I hadn’t done that, too.”

“What was ‘ow’?” Rodney demanded, skimming back over the places he’d just visited, and that really shouldn’t be feeling as good as it was. “Where was ‘ow’?”

“If I tell you, will you quit touching it?”

McKay abruptly withdrew his fingers from John’s hair, as though he hadn’t quite been aware he was doing it. “This isn’t funny. You could have a concussion.”

“I don’t have a concussion. I didn’t hit my head all that hard.”

“Is that your considered medical opinion?”

John sighed. “Look, let’s consider our options here. How about we just pry the door open manually?”

“I hadn’t thought of that,” Rodney admitted, surprise in his voice. “Why didn’t I think of that?”

“Don’t let it get you down that I was actually smarter than you about something.” In the dark, John was sure Rodney’s teeth were grinding together. “You take that side of the door, I’ll take this side.”

“Which side?” Rodney huffed.

John rolled his eyes. “The side you’re on right now?”

“Oh, for – yes, all right. Though I don’t know how much success I’ll have groping around – ”

As though Rodney were trying to prove his point, John felt a hand collide with his thigh. “Okay, that’s my leg,” he said, ignoring the pleasant sensation that jangled along his nerve endings as Rodney’s fingers skittered over his body before withdrawing.

He’d decided he was going to quit thinking about – that. Unfortunately, if Rodney kept touching various parts of him, his whole plan was going pear-shaped.

“Sorry, sorry,” Rodney murmured. “I’ll just – ”

“Yeah,” John said. “First one who finds the way out wins.”

  


    
    
    
    
 

*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*

    
    
    
    
 

  
They’d made it all the way through getting off the hive ship and nearly getting suffocated and several weeks of what John liked to euphemistically call _plans that hadn’t worked out exactly as advertise_d, and then his first night back in Atlantis he’d lain down on his bed and just had time to think _there’s no place like home_ when his doorchime had sounded.

He tried not to look pissy when he opened the door, but he must have done a poor job of it because Rodney’s eyes widened and he took a half step back. “Oh, sorry,” he said, “you were probably – ”

“Rodney,” John said slowly, “What.”

“The thing is, I, um – can I come in for a moment?” Before John could decide on that either way, Rodney was pushing past him into the room.

“Sure, why not?” John muttered. He turned around and his arms were in mid-fold when he saw the look on Rodney’s face. His arms dropped to his side and he took a couple of steps forward.

“Hey, you okay?”

“I – I’m terrified,” Rodney admitted.

A couple of dozen different disastrous scenarios scrolled through John’s head in the blink of an eye; it was depressing that he’d personally experienced most of them. “Jesus, did something happen?”

Rodney shook his head emphatically. “No, no, that’s just it. We’ve got maybe fifteen minutes before the next crisis, and I just wanted to, um, before something blows up or the Wraith drop in for tea I wanted to do something, say something, and – Christ, the crazy thing is, I can’t do it. When we’re in the middle of Armageddon, I have the courage but it’s not exactly the most convenient time to – and then when we’ve got time I can’t, because we’re normal, and this is just so – normal – ”

“Listen, whatever it is, you can tell me,” John said, as gently as he could considering he was one step from calling for a medical team and asking them to bring Rodney a really big sedative. He closed the remaining distance between them and placed what he hoped was a calming hand on Rodney’s shoulder. “Just open your mouth and let it come out, okay?”

Rodney’s lips parted and trembled. John tilted his head slightly to show he was listening.

And then Rodney leaned in and kissed him.

John had time to register _Rodney’s kissing me_ and _huh _and _that’s not too bad, actually_ before Rodney pulled away and slipped out from under John’s hand. He stared at John unblinkingly, mouth a thin, tense line.

“Well,” John said when the silence stretched, “I can see why you didn’t do that on the hive ship.” Which was, wow, a spectacularly dumb thing to say, but before he could think of something else, Rodney was saying:

“That was a bad idea. I’m sorry.”

John opened his mouth to say, _hey, you kind of took me by surprise here; I can do a lot better next time_, when the real world came crashing down around his ears. Instead, he looked down and murmured, “It’s okay. We can – chalk it up to stress.” Because really, that was the only thing that made sense; it wasn’t like Rodney had shown any indication before this that he was hot for John’s bod, and he’d recently gone through a seriously unpleasant experience, and that was the only plausible explanation. It had to be.

Rodney barked a short laugh. “Yes. Good plan, excellent plan; thank you for downgrading my humiliation from absolute to merely abject,” he babbled, and John stood there, stunned, while Rodney walked out the door.

  


    
    
    
    
 

*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*

    
    
    
    
 

  
“I don’t believe this!” Rodney seethed over the sound of clanging and crashing and his own periodic grunting noises.

“Rodney, hey, stop – ”

“This – is – a manual system! The lever – is attached – to a cable! But I’m pulling – and nothing’s happening!”

“Maybe it’s broken,” John offered helpfully.

“Oh, yes – ” another clang “ – thank you for that! I don’t know – ” _clang _“ – what I’d do without your brilliant technical insights!”

John did the only thing he could then; he crawled in the direction of Rodney’s voice and the loud breathing and put his hands on him. His left ended up on Rodney’s right shoulder, his right on Rodney’s chest, over his heart.

“Rodney, whoa,” he murmured. “Stop. We’re not going to get out this way.”

“There is no other way out! We have to find out if something happened to Atlantis, and – ”

“Shhh, hey.” John realized he was rubbing slow circles into Rodney’s flesh with the palms of his hands, but he couldn’t be bothered to care.

“I want to get out of here,” Rodney said in a small voice.

“So do I. And we will; it just might take some time.” Then he remembered Rodney reading something on a glowy Ancient panel outside the door on the way in. “What about that panel? Did it give you any information we could use to get out?”

“Yes,” Rodney said, the syllable dripping enough sarcasm to flood the room. “It said, ‘in case of total blackout, break glass.’”

“Rodney, what did it say, dammit?”

“It was ridiculous! It was paragraph after paragraph of some mystical mumbo-jumbo about how the first to enter the room, should they be troubled by their desires, blah blah blah, should be able here to receive their heart’s most secret wish.”

“Jesus,” John muttered, sitting back on his haunches. “And you didn’t think you should maybe tell me this before we walk in the room?”

“You don’t actually believe in that crap, do you? My first thought was, hey, mumbo-jumbo, some of their temples are full of Ancient gadgets, maybe we should check it out.”

“Check it out, but with caution!” John snapped. “And mutual sharing of information!”

“What difference does it make? We’re still trapped in the room and cut off from Atlantis because – ”

“– because one of us wants to be trapped in this room and cut off from Atlantis,” John finished for him.

There was dead silence. “That’s just – that makes no sense,” Rodney said finally, though there was a funny note in his voice that John couldn’t interpret.

“Humor me,” John said grimly. “Which one of us was the first to enter the room?”

Another pause. “Ha! You were!”

“Okay.” John thought about it for a minute. “So let’s assume I wanted to be alone in the dark. Why?”

“Do I look like a psychiatrist? And besides, you aren’t alone.” John could hear the wheels grinding. “And assuming this thing actually does what it says it does, you couldn’t have wanted to be alone.”

“Why not?”

“Because I stood outside the room for at least a minute after you went in, taking readings on the panel. The door should have shut in my face.”

“Okay,” John said slowly. “So I didn’t want to be alone, but I wanted to be alone with you.”

For a few seconds, all that John could hear was the sharp hitch in Rodney’s breathing bouncing off the walls of the room.

“Why?” Rodney asked quietly. John could tell that his chin was raised slightly, and hell, when had he gotten so tuned in to Rodney’s mannerisms that he could see him even when it was pitch black?

John tried to swallow, but all of the spit seemed to have left his mouth. “I – wait a minute, you’re saying you believe in this now?”

John felt Rodney’s fingers brush his chest before sliding upward. He shivered.

“Why?” This time it was a whisper. Following the sound, John reached out blindly for Rodney and found him easily, hand gripping the back of Rodney’s neck and pulling him closer, because he’d managed to ignore a lot of pretty clear signs that this was going to happen, but when the Freaky Ancient Room decided to lock them in together, even John knew it was time to quit fighting it.

“You’re the genius,” he rasped. “Why do you think?” Leaning forward, he realized he’d underestimated the angle of the tilt when his lips collided with Rodney’s chin, but he regrouped swiftly enough and found his way to the target.

“I thought you didn’t – ” Rodney managed a minute or so later, between kisses.

“You didn’t give me a chance to think about whether I wanted it or not,” John murmured, trailing his mouth over Rodney’s jaw. “Sorry. I said some pretty stupid things.”

“Oh, I don’t know. I think ‘I can see why you didn’t do that on the hive ship’ was such a brilliant response, only surpassed by ‘we can chalk it up to stress.’”

“I thought you _were _stressed,” John complained, worrying Rodney’s earlobe with his teeth.

“I’ve been stressed since I was four years old and my mother decided I was ready to learn algebra,” Rodney growled. He cupped John’s face in his hands and held him steady while he planted a sucking kiss on his neck, then another. “I’m used to it by now.”

“Oh, good,” John gasped, because hell, he could just wear that high-collared shirt tomorrow, “then this is – ”

“Probably not a temporary condition, no,” Rodney murmured against his skin. “Is that all right?” He paused, waiting for John’s answer, breath shallow but steady, hands still cradling his face; it was like he was letting him know he was here, and he wasn’t going anywhere this time.

A slow smile spread across John’s face. “Yeah,” he said, arms encircling Rodney’s broad back and pulling him closer, “that’s just fine.”

  


    
    
    
    
 

*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*

    
    
    
    
 

  
“So what would have happened if you’d gone in first?”

“Probably the same thing. Except the lights would’ve stayed on.”

John grinned. “Are you afraid of the dark, little boy?”

“No! I just – well, there would have been a bed, too. Do you have some kind of floor fetish?”

“Floor fetish? Are you kidding me?”

“I’m sure in the vast panoply of human mental dysfunction there’s some poor bastard who can only have sex on a floor. However, he probably is not afflicted with my – ow – lower back problem.”

“Quit whining. We’ll do it in a bed next time.”

“Mine, please. I have a prescription mattress.”

John stared at him; Rodney must have been able to tell, because he blurted, “Well, I do!”

“Wow. I’ve never had sex on a prescription mattress before.” John slid a hand down Rodney’s back until it cupped his ass. “Do you think if I asked nicely you’d wear the Depends and the support hose for me?”

“You are sick,” Rodney said, though John could hear the smile he was holding back. “Who knew you had such a dark side?”

John leaned in and nuzzled around a bit until he found Rodney’s mouth, then breathed, “Lights.” Suddenly, the room was ablaze.

Rodney squinted against the brightness. “How did you – ”

“Camera,” John said, and he heard a loud squawk emerge from Rodney’s earpiece. Picking it up, he handed it to Rodney, who glared at him before putting it on. “Elizabeth. Yes, we’re fine. No, no problems. Sorry we didn’t check in; we found some – ah, some Ancient tech, and got…carried away. Yes, we’ll be sure to check in in another – two hours? Great. ‘Bye.” Fumbling the headset off, he hissed, “Why did you make me do that? You know I suck at lying.”

John shrugged. “I may be a better liar, but I’m not sure even I could have come up with an explanation of why I was wearing your headset,” he answered.

Rodney blinked. “Oh. Yes. Right.”

John pushed himself up off the floor, then offered a hand to Rodney, who took it and rose with a pained grunt. “Seriously not a fan of the floor,” he muttered.

John silenced him with a kiss. “Action,” he whispered.

There was a blinding flash, and when John could see again he noted with satisfaction that the room was now occupied by a huge bed.

Rodney stared at it for a few seconds, then turned to stare at John. “Okay,” he said, “I’m willing to concede there might be something to the mumbo-jumbo that was on the plaque.”

“I don’t know if it’s prescription,” John drawled.

“I have faith in your ability to rearrange matter with your mind,” Rodney said, smiling at him kind of goofily.

John smiled back in what was probably an even more dorky fashion, but he didn’t care. Darkness hid the parts of him he really wanted Rodney to see.

**Author's Note:**

> First published July 2006.


End file.
